From: Duane Currie <dcurrie@sandman.acadiau.ca>
Message-Id: <199811142340.TAA13765@sandman.acadiau.ca>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] More PostgreSQL+CORBA
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9811142144120.333-100000@thelab.hub.org> from The
	Hermit Hacker at "Nov 14, 98 09:49:48 pm"
To: scrappy@hub.org (The Hermit Hacker)
Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1998 23:40:21 +0000 (AST)
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ReSent-Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1998 23:48:33 -0400 (AST)
ReSent-From: The Hermit Hacker <scrappy@hub.org>
ReSent-To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
ReSent-Subject: Re: [HACKERS] More PostgreSQL+CORBA
ReSent-Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9811142348330.333@thelab.hub.org>

> > > 
> > > 	My experience is that for pretty much every pro, there is a
> > > con...what are we losing with ORBit that we'd have with mico?  Short
> > > and/or long term?  mico is reputed to be Corba 2.2 compliant..orbit?
> > 
> > In the short term we lose lots of functions with ORBit. In the long run
> > however we win performance. 
> 
> 	I was talking with a friend of mine down here, that I was *hoping*
> would have posted by now since I really really hate translating what
> someone else said, but...

ok, ok, Marc... you've got me into it now... :)

I started thinking about that talking to Marc about the CORBA ORB issue.
GNOME wants ORBit, BSD'ers want mico, linux'ers want omniorb, etc...
(forgive any possible generalizations above)

Basically what I was saying to Marc is that the really ORB-dependent part
of CORBA is the IDL-to-<language> mappings.  The logic of the CORBA object
can be implemented as a normal object independent of the compiled stub.
Then, all that has to be done is to fill in the stubs with code that 
acts as an adaptor to the ORB-independent object.  That way porting to
another ORB should be trivial.  

Someone out there correct me if I'm wrong... :)

I do like the idea of using CORBA to access postgreSQL.  There is the
obvious advantage of not having to worry about porting libpg to every
system and language.  CORBA ORB vendors/developers can take care of that.  

What really makes me curious is what the object's interface will be...
Just a clone of libpg, or something more?...  I think someone earlier 
mentioned possibly doing things like directly referencing "objects."
I think that the use of CORBA could allow for much more functionality
than a classical SQL RDBMS interface.  I don't know that much about the
backend, but it could be interesting to throw some ideas back and forth
about what could be done with the interface.

I would personally prefer to have a more natural OO interface to 
the database, possibly expanding on the idea of being able to directly
reference objects (and hold the reference to them). 

Duane

--------------------------------------------
Duane Currie (dcurrie@sandman.acadiau.ca)
Unix System Administrator/Software Developer
Acadia Institute for Teaching and Technology
--------------------------------------------